2017 IGHSC - CROSSING BORDERS, CHALLENGING BOUNDARIES

Keynote Speaker: Dr. John Merriman

The keynote speaker for the 2017 conference was Dr. John Merriman, the Charles Seymour Professor of History at Yale University. Dr. Merriman presented his lecture on "Against the State: Anarchist Violence in Paris during the Belle Époque that Wasn’t.

What happens when scholars remove the lines that separate states, nations, generations, the sexes, and other divisions in society? The International Graduate Historical Studies Conference (IGHSC) at Central Michigan University discussed this very topic on March 27-28, 2015. Increasingly, scholars in a variety of fields are ignoring the societal boundaries and geographical borders that have long separated those engaged in historical inquiry. The IGHSC offered students and faculty in the humanities and the social sciences the opportunity to explore the benefits, the challenges, and the limitations of crossing borders and moving beyond boundaries.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Thomas Bender

The keynote speaker for the 2015 conference was Dr. Thomas Bender, University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at New York University. Dr. Bender presented his lecture on “Transnational and Global History- Why Now?”

2014 IGHSC - RELOCATING HISTORY, REPOSITIONING THE PAST

The International Graduate Historical Studies Conference (IGHSC) at Central Michigan University hosted students and faculty on March 28-29, 2014.

Keynote Speaker: Linda Colley

The keynote speaker for the 2014 conference was Linda Colley from Princeton University. Born in Britain, Colley has taught and written on history and current events on both sides of the Atlantic. Previously at Cambridge, Yale, and the London School of Economics, she is now Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. Her most recent work The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History was nominated one of the ten best books of 2007 by the New York Times.

2013 IGHSC - HISTORY WITHOUT BORDERS

The International Graduate Historical Studies Conference (IGHSC) at Central Michigan University discussed this on April 5-6, 2013.

Keynote Speaker: David Armitage

David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual history and international history. He was born in Britain and educated at Cambridge University and Princeton University. A prize-winning teacher and writer, Armitage has lectured on six continents and has held research fellowships and visiting positions in Britain, France, the United States and Australia. He currently holds an Honorary Professorship of History at the University of Sydney.

David Armitage is the author or editor of thirteen books, among them Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), which won the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award, Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), which was chosen as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, and Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013). His articles and essays have appeared in journals and collections around the world and his books have been translated into Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

2012 IGHSC - BORDERS, BOUNDARIES AND BEYOND

The International Graduate Historical Studies Conference (IGHSC) at Central Michigan University discussed this very topic on April 13-14, 2012.

Keynote Speaker: Erez Manela

Erez Manela is Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches international history and the history of the United States in the world. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.

He is the author of The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2007), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) and the Akira Iriye International History Book Award. He is also co-editor of The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Harvard, 2010), and has published numerous articles, chapters, and reviews.

His research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, among others. He is a member of the editorial board of the e-journal New Global Studies. His recent research has focused on the history of the World Health Organization’s global smallpox eradication program in the 1960s and ‘70s, aiming to situate that campaign within the broader international history of the postwar era. His article, “A Pox on Your Narrative: Writing Disease Control into Cold War History,” appeared in the April 2010 issue of Diplomatic History.